


Half Agony, Half Hope

by bookishandbossy



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Jane Austen Fusion, Alternate Universe - Regency, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fitzsimmons Rom-Com Challenge, Pining, Slow Burn, Some Humor, background Huntingbird and staticquake, hints of steampunk, persuasion au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-10
Updated: 2016-09-10
Packaged: 2018-08-14 07:33:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8003917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookishandbossy/pseuds/bookishandbossy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seven years ago, Leo Fitz let himself be persuaded into breaking off his engagement with Miss Jemma Simmons.  Now, he remains unmarried, his days occupied by his family's myriad of problems and most certainly not by thoughts of the only woman he's ever loved.  Until she returns to England.</p><p>(A genderswapped Persuasion AU.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Half Agony, Half Hope

**Author's Note:**

> The title and a few lines in Jemma's letter come from the Austen original, which I highly recommend.
> 
> Written for the Fitzsimmons Network's Rom Com Challenge!

The day that Leo Fitz discovered Miss Jemma Simmons had returned to England, it rained. Thick, pouring, torrential, the kind of gray mist that coated the windows of the house and rendered any view beyond the nearest hedge impossible. Fitz, being of a sensible disposition and possessed of a reasonable knowledge of meteorology, supposed that it would pass over in the next few days. His father and brother, however, had neither.

“Everyone will be wondering how my new project is progressing with the rain, I suppose,” Sir Holden Radcliffe, erstwhile botanist, irresponsible property-holder, and Fitz's father, said and frowned in the general misty direction of the hedge. “I imagine that it must be quite the topic of conversation in the village, Sir Radcliffe's hedges. Or the sheep. I sent off another letter to the Royal Academy about the new strain.”

The new strain was, to Fitz's eyes, completely indistinguishable from any other strain of sheep he had glimpsed in his life. His brother Grant began to wonder if the sheep would be in any danger of getting into the hunting grounds, his father was appalled at the very idea, and Fitz kept his mouth firmly shut and ignored the newspaper on the side table. It was a sentence-long item, tucked away on the third page, small enough that no one else would have noticed it. Miss Jemma Simmons, captain in the Royal Navy, and her ship were back in port at Plymouth after a lengthy voyage to Australia.

And for the first time in nearly seven years, he could safely say that he once again was breathing the same air as the woman he had once planned to marry. 

_Seven Years Ago_  
Jemma Simmons was not supposed to have been allowed out in society. Her manners were somewhat lacking and her prospects next to nothing, as the youngest daughter of a country curate. But it was a small party and her family had determined that she would go. (Her mother had even confiscated the navigation charts she'd attempted to slip into her muff.)

It was an inauspicious beginning by any accounts. Mr. Fitz collided with her while he was attempting to lurk behind a pillar and her china teacup of lemonade went flying, saved only by her quick reflexes as she lunged forward to snatch it out of the air. 

“I...I apologize, Miss...?” he trailed off, struck by the horrifying realization that they had yet to be properly introduced.

“Miss Simmons. Jemma Simmons.”

“My most sincere apologies, Miss Simmons,” he mumbled and flushed bright pink. “I wasn't attending to the party as I should.”

“Apology accepted. After all, there doesn't seem to be much to attend to.” Jemma swept one hand out around the room in a gesture that seemed to include the young lady treating her audience to a thoroughly gloomy piano tune, the disappointed dancers shooting her discreet glares, the gossips whispering behind their fans in a corner, and the cups of weak lemonade and crumbling biscuits that lined the sideboard. 

“What would you attend to then?” Fitz blurted out. He hadn't meant to keep on talking to her. There were elderly ladies who had to be charmed and fathers who had to be kept from saying anything too imprudent and hosts to be flattered. Being the eldest son of a minor baronet with a tendency to squander money, a crumbling estate, and an extensive social circle required endless rounds of pleasantries and rituals, a code that Fitz was still learning how to decipher. But there was something about her bright eyes and the loose curls that had stubbornly escaped her careful updo that made him look at her and look again. In a sea of country squires and petty gossip, Miss Jemma Simmons might just have proven to be something interesting. 

“Oh, hundreds of things. Aerial navigation, plants of the Amazon jungle, ocean currents, Mrs. Radcliffe's novels, poison dart frogs—I'd like to find a way to extract their poison and see if it had any possible medical applications. I have a theory that in small doses it could perhaps be used as a painkiller if you--” Jemma paused and seemed to remember herself, the flush fading from her cheeks and her hands demurely falling back to her sides. “I'm afraid that I'll bore you if I go on.”

“Quite the contrary, Miss Simmons. I...” Fitz took a breath and then met her eyes full on. They were a perfectly ordinary shade of brown at first glance, like hundreds of other pairs of brown eyes that he had met in his life. Yet hers were anything but brown. They were amber and caramel and a thousand other ridiculous words that came flooding into his mind with a shocking intensity. Fitz had never been much of a poet but at that moment he could have sworn that he thought himself capable of writing a sonnet. “I think that you couldn't be boring if you tried.”

 _1814_  
When he had ended their engagement, Fitz had expected to never see Jemma Simmons again. The few people who had known of their plans had all been close friends and family, who had collectively come to an agreement to never speak of it again. Theirs had been a quiet engagement from the very beginning, marked by an exchange of letters over the course of a few months and an antique silver engagement ring that she had returned to him in a neatly tied parcel. And afterward, she had seemingly slipped out of his reach forever.

Jemma had floated off in an a broken down airship with a commission that she'd coaxed out of the Royal Navy and a ragtag crew of green sailors and returned from the Amazon with a hold full of new plant samples, two captured French airships as prizes, and a crew who hung on her every word. Fitz had seen article after article about her adventures in the newspapers. Never on purpose, of course, and not as if he wanted to hear news of her but by accident, in between turning from the war news to the sporting pages. She slipped into the cracks of his life, in every place where his mind failed to make everything slot into its proper place, and when he did think of her, Fitz tried his utmost to board the cracks up. 

Yet now here she was. In the same country—no, the same county, according to the news his good friend Mr. Alphonso Mackenzie had brought him. That would have been enough to drive him to distraction but his distress was only compounded by the fact that almost unknowingly, he had allowed Radcliffe Hall to be let to her cousin. His father's lack of financial acumen had led them a state that while not precarious, was alarming enough to lead Fitz to place discreet calls to butchers and tailors and ask them to politely decline any orders his father or brother placed. Finally, after a few whispered conferences with the family lawyer Matthew Murdock and a few more glowing descriptions of the charms of the botanist community in Bath, his family had been convinced to let the manor and take a smaller house in town. Fitz would miss Radcliffe Hall horribly—the banisters he had tried to slide down as a small child, the kitchen where he'd coaxed spare scraps of pastry out of the cook, the gardens he'd raced carefully through, intent on not damaging his father's hedges. However, his feelings were of little account in the matter. The house would have to be let and Captain Morse and Mr. Hunter were ideal tenants. Not only were they a perfectly respectable naval couple, who swore up and down that they had no intention of altering the gardens or his brother's billiards room, but they had expressed interest in occupying Radcliffe Hall almost immediately and prevented the family from having to stoop to such common measures as putting an ad in the newspaper. (Fitz would have been able to weather the disgrace but Grant would probably have had to go out and kill a great many small animals before he felt better about it.)

Captain Bobbi Morse and her husband, a former privateer in need of a shave and a properly fitted cravat according to Fitz's father, arrived at Radcliffe Hall on a Thursday in a carriage that Captain Morse drove shockingly fast. “The paintings are quite unusual,” she said, turning in a slow circle in the entrance hall. “Have they been in the family long?”

“They have. My eight-times-great grandfather was rather fond of grim saint stories, unfortunately. The one of Saint Sebastian getting pierced by arrows gave me quite a few nightmares as a small child. We can cover them up if you like, of course,” Fitz added hastily, with the belated realization that Saint Sebastian's pained expression might not create the most welcoming atmosphere. He had had the entire house cleaned from the grand entrance hall to the dusty back rooms that had been closed off years ago after a particularly ill-fated botanical venture, ordered a special menu from the kitchen for Captain Morse and Mr. Hunter's arrival, given orders to have the walks swept and more obscure hedges pruned, and in short, done everything to transform the hall from its slightly ramshackle state into a respectable residence. However, he hadn't stopped to consider that the house's natural state was not only ramshackle but plainly alarming. Fitz's ancestors had been fond of decorations that tended towards the dark and grim and had rapidly acquired the status of heirlooms before anyone could summon the courage to throw them out. 

“Dunno if that's necessary. They give the place a very posh atmosphere, don't they?” Mr. Hunter said and squinted at a tapestry. Fitz wasn't sure but he thought that Hunter might have been exaggerating his lower-class accent on purpose, just to see Sir Radcliffe's face turn an assortment of amusing colors. 

“We wouldn't dream of changing anything,” Captain Morse said firmly and shot her husband a stern look. “It gives the place such character.”

“Notice she doesn't say what kind of character—ow!” Mr. Hunter yelped. His wife appeared to have stood on his foot with her traveling boots and as she steered him away to inspect a statue of Cerberus, they promptly began to fiercely argue in lowered voices. Five minutes later, they were holding hands underneath the tea table like newlyweds. Fitz was charmed in spite of himself. They were frank and friendly, full of stories about their travels and rather improperly still in love despite being married for nearly five years, and as Fitz buttered a scone, he forced himself away from the thought that if things had gone differently, they might have been his friends. He might have spent his evenings in the company of people like them, people whose conversation and manners he found not only agreeable, that polite adjective applied to everything from a string quartet to another country squire's daughter thrust into his way, but beyond fascinating. It was quite a novel sensation, to be allowed to take a turn in the conversation and once in a while, to even be allowed to guide it. In fact, Fitz thought, if things had gone differently, he might still be having tea with Captain Morse and Mr. Hunter but with someone else handing round the tea by his side, rolling her eyes at him affectionately when he took a fourth cake, using the crumpets to demonstrate some scientific point...

“We find it so difficult to get family news from overseas, even with the new messenger birds Wellington has been employing,” Captain Morse complained. “It took me nearly four months to find that my cousin had been married.”

Fitz nearly choked on his scone. Who could she have married? When? And how? (In the same way that thousands of other people did every year, a painfully practical voice inside his head informed him, with a license and a minister and perhaps even a ring.) He hadn't seen any kind of notice in the papers, in the engagement and wedding columns that he did his best to avoid...perhaps it had been an elopement to Scotland, something quickly done and wildly romantic. Some dashing sea captain who had the bravery that Fitz lacked had probably swooped in and swept her off her feet with a click of his boot heels and some well-placed rope knots and navigational charts. He couldn't have knotted a rope if his life depended on it, Fitz thought miserably. 

“Y—your cousin is married? How many months ago? I—perhaps you could send them a present. Something from the gardens, on—on behalf of the hall as well,” Fitz improvised hastily. “We grow quite lovely flowers in the greenhouses.”

“Yes, my cousin Maria. My cousin Jemma has yet to marry,” Captain Morse said, putting a slight emphasis on the name. (Or was it his imagination that made her name linger a little longer in the air after it was said?) “We have great hopes of her settling down near us now that the war is nearly at an end. She seems quite determined to find a suitable husband. I believe that she's even made lists of all her desired qualities. How many are we up to now, Hunter?”

“Fifty-eight.” Mr. Hunter went on to describe the memorable event of being forced to listen to Jemma making the list of all those qualities, but Fitz hardly attended to the conversation. Suddenly, he could breathe again and his heartbeat had once more taken up a respectable pace. Of course, she would marry eventually. Any woman as lovely and accomplished as Jemma Simmons could hardly be lacking in proposals and he had resigned himself to that prospect long ago. Yet there would be something uncomfortably real about seeing the news in the paper, or hearing it from across a drawing room, something that would make a knot draw tight in his chest to the point of suffocation. Once she married, he would lose the very last piece of her, the slight distinction of being the only man to have ever offered her his hand and his heart and meant it.

 

“Yesterday, I met the man who broke your heart,” Bobbi told Jemma. It was an odd statement to make in the middle of tea and hardly in keeping with decorum but from her years of captaining an airship to her marriage with a former privateer who had grown up on the streets of London and who she had once held at gunpoint, Bobbi Morse had left decorum behind in the wake of her ship years ago. Jemma Simmons, who had once dressed for dinner in the midst of the Amazon rainforest, simply took another sip of her tea and wondered where the clotted cream had gone. (She most distinctly did not wonder about Leo Fitz.)

“We broke each other's hearts and it was a good thing that we did,” Jemma said and changed the subject. “Have they managed to acquire any more grim medieval art up at the hall? I rather liked the large tapestry of the stag hunt with all the bleeding animals about.”

“He looks older,” Bobbi said thoughtfully in the general direction of her cake and checked for Jemma's reaction out of the corner of her eye. Jemma kept her face perfectly straight. It made no difference to her whether or not he looked older, or whether the worry lines she had always teased were already threatening him had begun to make their appearance or whether the weight of his family had worn him down to the bone. He was nothing more than an acquaintance now, if even that. (Proper society had yet to devise a guide for how to treat one's former fiancé.)

“Seven years will do that.”

“Nothing? You're not the least bit curious as to what's become of the man you were once engaged to?” Bobbi asked. “I still look for Mr. Barton's name in the naval reports and he only courted me for a few months and never seriously, at that. Wouldn't you like to know how Mr. Fitz is faring? If he's changed at all?”

“I imagine that he hasn't changed in the slightest. At nineteen, Mr. Fitz was maddeningly stubborn about the most unimportant details, too easily swayed by others about the important ones and a slave to the demands of his family. Mr. Fitz at twenty-six must be much the same,” Jemma snapped, her fingers curling tightly around the handle of her china teacup. She could just imagine Fitz now: the same messy curls and worry hovering around his blue eyes, waistcoat perfectly tucked in, managing and compromising and flattering and nearly breaking himself in half to please everyone else. True, he had been young, ready to be guided by friends who supposed themselves older and wiser, but if she had been in his position, she would have held firm. 

At nineteen, she had run halfway across the world to escape her heartbreak over a man who lacked the resolve to marry the woman he loved. At twenty-six, she knew her own heart and mind better. She would choose a man who would never let anyone else persuade him from his chosen course of action, a man whose determination matched her own. And she would refuse to spare a single thought for Leopold Fitz.

_Seven Years Ago_  
Fitz had never imagined this kind of happiness. He had spent much of his life attempting to master the art of conversation, a necessary skill for any eldest son, and with a few close friends, like Mr. Alphonso Mackenzie and his wife Elena, he could feel at his ease. But this—this effortless flow of words between him and Miss Simmons, this sense of two minds stretching to meet each other, this heady feeling and growing warmth in his chest—this was like nothing else he had ever felt in his life.

He knew that he loved her the first time he found her in Radcliffe Hall's library, curled into a window seat in a swirl of skirts as the other guests played croquet on the lawn, book in one hand and pen in the other, brow furrowed in an intense expression of concentration. “Fitz,” she said with a delighted expression. “Come look at what I've found in this volume on plants of the Amazon. I've been yearning to tell you about it for ages.”

“You mean you haven't proclaimed it to the general party, like the incident with the constellations?”

“I wouldn't dream of it. Besides, I find that no one understands me quite so well as you do,” Jemma admitted, coloring slightly. 

That was when he kissed her. He simply hadn't been able to go any longer without doing it. Seeing her, eyes shining, lips parted, and aglow with excitement at her new discovery, he had known. This was the woman he would love for the rest of his life, would marry and make the mistress of Radcliffe Hall. He would walk with her in the gardens and see her face across the dinner table across evening, he'd take her on voyages across the Channel to see the new airships they were developing in Prussia and to all the other million and one places she wanted to go, and perhaps someday they would have children with her quick mind and brown eyes. He'd spend every ordinary and extraordinary day that was to come with her, if she'd have him. So Fitz had swooped forward, caught her hands in his, and kissed her with the kind of passion he hadn't even known he was capable of, pressing her back against the window as he covered her mouth with his.

Afterward, she pulled back and turned to him with a shy smile. “I suspect that was thoroughly improper, Mr. Fitz. And I enjoyed it thoroughly.”

“There's nothing for it now, you know,” he said mock-solemnly and took her left hand between both of his. “I'm afraid, Miss Simmons, that I've fallen quite madly in love with you and that I'll have to marry you.”

“I suppose that I might be amenable to that.”

 

_1814_  
He narrowly escaped seeing her and although Fitz told himself that it had been a lucky chance that saw him invited to stay with the Mackenzies the exact same week that she was due to pay her respects to Morse and Hunter, there was some part of him that was almost disappointed at missing the chance to see her. After all, in the weeks that they had prepared for the move to Bath, he hadn't been able to help imagining Jemma walking through the halls of the house. Would she still poke fun at the hedges and adore the cook's scones? How would her skirts sound gliding along the marble floors and would she still automatically go to the corner of the library that she had claimed as her own during their brief engagement? (He had kept all the books that she liked there, despite the butler's protests at the improper categorization of geology with biology.)

For the first few days of his visit with Mack and Elena, he was almost driven to distraction by the idea of Jemma Simmons in Radcliffe Hall. Then he thought better of it. The important thing was not to linger over the memory of a love that was seven years gone, but that the family acquaintance with Captain Morse and Mr. Hunter, or any social acquaintance that was to come in the county, not be made awkward because of it. Everyone behaved as if it had never happened, after all. Surely he could as well.

“They're good people, I promise. Always willing to do anything for their friends. I've known Bobbi ever since she made her debut,” Mack told him. “She wasn't like anything London society had ever seen—riding a horse at full speed through St. James' Park, slapping a man in full view of an entire ballroom when he made an unpleasant remark about her choice of fiance—and they loved her for it. She's had quite the brilliant career and he's been at her side for almost all of it.”

“I'm not worried about them disturbing the hallowed grounds of Radcliffe Hall. The grounds have been disturbed thoroughly already,” Fitz said wryly. “Iuite liked Bobbi and Hunter when I met them, actually.”

“Of course Mack forgets to mention the time he knocked Mr. Hunter out with a nightstick,” Elena put in with a laugh. Mack gazed fondly down at her, squeezing his wife's hand where it lay folded in her skirts, and Fitz felt that tightness in his chest again. Mack and Elena had the kind of marriage that Fitz had once longed to have for himself, a match of two people eminently suited for each other and founded on the utmost respect and love. Elena, however, came from a well-respected South American Creole family who could trace their ancestry back to the conquistadors. Mack was in possession of a respectable estate that he had carefully developed, a neatly arranged portfolio of investments run by his banker in London, and the good grace to fall in love with a suitable woman. Fitz was not and nearly seven years ago, he had come to the uncomfortable realization of what kind of woman he would need to marry, not only one suitable for the eldest son of a Sir but one with the money necessary to pull his family back from the brink. In fact, it had been Mack himself who had helped him come to that realization when he had pointed out that, whatever Jemma Simmons' charms, his family simply couldn't afford for him to marry her.

“The man deserved it,” Mack protested. “He was lucky that I didn't think to use the shotgun ax.” Elena jumped in before he could embark on another lament for the long-lost shotgun ax, asking Fitz when he planned to settle in Bath for the winter and making him promise to pay a call on them as soon as he arrived. 

“I don't know how long Lincoln and Daisy will keep me, but I promise I'll send a letter as soon as I leave for Bath so you can descend on our doorstep,” Fitz said and repressed an inner shudder at the thought of Bath. He had never been particularly fond of the town, preferring the bustle of London or the quiet of the countryside. Bath was neither large enough to provide sufficient diversions nor small enough to leave him to his own devices and he anticipated their time there with something less than pleasure. 

In another week, he set off for Lincoln and Daisy's cottage and found the house in an uproar when he arrived. There were guests over at the main house and one of them just happened to be Miss Jemma Simmons. “We can hide you away till she's gone, you know,” Lincoln offered. “Behind the hobby horses in the nursery.”

“We could even disguise you as one of Melinda's dolls,” Daisy added, eyes sparkling with mirth. “I think you'd make a lovely pirate captain. She's in a pirate phase now, probably inspired by her namesake's latest visit.”

“Really? I'm sorry to have missed her.” Fitz could never decide if he was terrified of or utterly impressed by Daisy's godmother and mentor, General Melinda May. (He leaned towards terrified, most days.)

“She only left a few days ago and now we have a pirate fort in one of the trees out back. Melinda and Callum tried to lay siege to the main house a few days ago,” Daisy said. “They demanded extra jam with their scones and chocolate cake for tea, and we had no choice but to acquiesce.”

“Sounds like quite the adventure.” Fitz almost offered to add a gangplank to his niece and nephew's pirate fort but then considered the probability of them making their baby sister's dolls walk the plank and thought better of it. 

“We don't have to socialize at all with them, really. Lord and Lady Coulson will have to do without their grandchildren for a week or so. Or better yet, we'll send them over to the main house for the whole time and have a week of perfect freedom,” Lincoln joked. The subject soon gave way to discussion of the latest county gossip and family developments, Daisy's ardent desire to go to Italy as soon as the war was over, Lincoln's latest battles with the village hypochondriac and what was decidedly not a case of bubonic plague, and, of course, the move to Bath. However, during their walk across the downs the next morning, Lincoln brought it up again.

“It truly doesn't trouble you to have her so near?” he asked, regarding Fitz with sharp blue eyes. Lincoln had still been at school when Fitz had met Jemma but he had seen his older brother mope around the library and refuse to court any other woman in the years afterward. “You've been awfully quiet on the subject.”

“That's merely because I don't have anything to say on the subject. If anything, it's reminded me of the necessity of finding a wife before the rest of the family spends every last cent in the gardens and on the gambling tables,” Fitz said and hoped that it would be sufficient to distract his brother. 

“Really? And pray tell me, where do you plan to find this wife? Maybe she'll pop up in the library when you're balancing the accounts one day?” Lincoln raised an eyebrow at Fitz. “I want you to be happy more than anyone else does, Fitz. But happiness isn't something that happens at the roll of a die or that you can pick out of a crowd. Sometimes you have to seek it out. Trust me, I know.”

He did. Nearly six years ago, everyone had believed that Fitz's youngest brother would drink himself to death. Lincoln had fallen in with a rough crowd at Oxford, a group of young men who spent their nights going from tavern to tavern and challenging each other to fights in the streets, and after failing his first medical exam, he had only drunk more. Until the cold December night when Fitz had been summoned down to London to retrieve his brother from the public hospital Lincoln had ended up in after being found half-dead in the gutter. That—that had been quite possibly the most terrifying night of Fitz's life. He had knelt in the church next door to the hospital, the cold stones cutting through the fabric of his breeches, and sent a prayer out to whatever gods or forces or fate existed out there. _Please, leave me this._

It had taken months for Lincoln to recover back at Radcliffe Hall, months that he'd spent learning from the local doctor, taking long walk across the moors with Fitz, and talking through his problems with Mr. Donnelly, one of the local squires. Then he had met Daisy Johnson and it had been as if a light had been flipped on inside him. Suddenly Fitz's younger brother was planning excursions to seaside towns, stealing cakes from the kitchen to take on rides across the countryside with Daisy, and had written down to Oxford to ask if it was possible for him to continue his medical studies. The right woman in the right place at the right moment...Fitz had never seen his brother so happy and so he had resolved to make Lincoln and Daisy's marriage possible, whatever his father and brother might say against the match. He had let himself be persuaded out of a love match, but his brother would not be.

_Seven Years Ago_  
“You can't really think of making a girl like her the mistress of Radcliffe Hall, Leopold. The youngest daughter of a nothing country family, with hardly a penny to her name. And worst of all, the girl intends to make her own fortune. Think what people would say. We are watched in certain circles, you know.” His father.

“It's a pretty rotten trick you're playing on all of us, Fitz, marrying someone like that. She can't even hunt!” Grant.

“Girls like that aren't quite the marrying kind, m'boy. Wait and see, she'll run off in an airship the moment you turn your back and end up going completely native in Brazil or one of those infernal jungles.” John Garrett, Grant's thoroughly distasteful but shockingly influential acquaintance.

Those kinds of voices Fitz could have pushed aside eventually. Perhaps. But they had merely been a small part of the cacophony that had descended upon him when he announced his intention of marrying Jemma. Everyone who heard of the engagement had offered their lukewarm congratulations in one breath and asked him to reconsider in the next. Even Mack and Elena, the two people he had imagined would be overjoyed, had offered up their doubts.

“First of all, there's the question of her parentage and inheritance,” Mack said with a small wince.

“I don't give a damn about her parentage,” Fitz declared. 

“Yet everyone else will. Radcliffe Hall needs money, plainly put. Money or the kind of old aristocratic name that can lead to investments, connections, extensions of credit...I wish it wasn't this way, Fitz, but you must make a sensible marriage. Something suitable to your situation. It's not that I don't like her,” Mack said heavily, sighing and running a hand over his forehead. “She's certainly clever. But she's...she's not the kind of girl who would be satisfied with a house in the country.”

“She has a wandering spirit,” Elena added. “The kind of girl who's always looking beyond the horizon for the next and best thing.”

“In the moment, I don't doubt that she'll make you happy. I just wonder if you'll make each other happy in five years, when she's grown tired of the same four walls and country society. Or if she'll even still be here in five years,” Mack said it so calmly, like he'd practiced it a hundred times, and with a sinking feeling Fitz realized that he probably had. Mack and Elena had discussed this conversation beforehand, planned it out, and if his closest friends couldn't support his marriage, where did he have left to turn?

“None of us want you to make a match you'll regret." Mack met Fitz's eyes steadily as he spoke and it was the genuine regret that Fitz saw in the other man's gaze that finally convinced him Mack was speaking the truth. The practical considerations were important, of course, but the thing that truly swayed him was the thought that Jemma might not be content with a life with him. She wanted storm-tossed seas and dark jungles and everything she had read about in books, and Fitz—however much he loved hearing her talk of the adventures she planned to have, Fitz would have content with his own hearth, a heap of machines to tinker with, and her by his side. 

He broke off his engagement with Jemma Simmons on a brilliantly cloudless summer day, in the gardens of Radcliffe Hall. She did not cry. He hadn't expected her to.

_1814_  
He was sitting in a perfectly ordinary drawing room and playing a quite dull round of whist when he saw her again. The door swung open, Sir and Lady Coulson looked up in eager anticipation, and there she was. Jemma swept into the room trailing fresh country air behind her and with a brilliant smile and a word for nearly everyone.

She'd learned how to navigate society with ease in the years since he'd known her, Fitz realized as he watched her make her way around the room. With Sir Coulson, she was full of stories of the Navy and endless patience for the new system of paperwork he was devising. For his wife Rosalind, she had sharp jokes, choice pieces of gossip, and details on the latest research she'd done out in the Pacific. She and Daisy talked like they'd known each other for years and she even managed to win Lincoln over with her extensive medical knowledge and in spite of the wary glances he'd been throwing her all afternoon. As for the eligible men in that drawing room...they swarmed around her like sharks to fresh blood. Fitz found it remarkably distasteful to watch.

She looked different, too, from when he'd last seen her. Where the years had begun to etch lines around his eyes and fade the color from his face, they had only made her lovelier. (Quite unfair, really.) She had acquired new constellations of freckles spattered across her nose and cheeks, probably from the weeks and months spent abroad her ship, her hair had tamed itself into a perfectly coiffed style, the blue and gold of her uniform suited her as gauzy frocks never had, and every inch of her seemed to glow in the late afternoon light like some shining brilliant star. And at the moment, laughing and talking with a young lieutenant named Will Daniels, she seemed quite as distant and cool as any star that Fitz had once observed with her. She'd inclined her head towards him in the briefest nod that courtesy would allow when she had entered the drawing room and then spent the following hour politely pretending that the corner where he sat was occupied by nothing more than dust and sunbeams. Fitz courteously ignored her existence as well. It was the least he could do, he thought miserably.

He had a million questions that he wanted to ask her, questions that his traitorous mind had been storing up for years and had decided to unleash upon him at this very moment. First of all, there were questions like what she had discovered in the Amazon jungles and the different kinds of ships she had captained, how she had managed to escape the ferocious Komodo dragons during her travels in Tasmania and what she had thought of India. Those were perfectly acceptable questions that one acquaintance might ask another, that he might in fact someday receive the chance to ask if they ever improved their relations. Far worse were the questions that he had no business asking of her. He wanted to know how her crew had reacted to being commanded by a woman or if sailing on the air currents high above the Atlantic had truly felt like the freedom she craved or if she had ever regretted her choices for one minute. He suspected not. 

Fitz busied himself with a book from Philip Coulson's considerable library and tried his best not to look at her. 

 

The entire county thought that Will Daniels was going to propose to Captain Simmons. Fitz would have quite liked to hate the man with a fiery passion that Lord Byron himself would approve of. He would have loved to have cast stormy glances in Mr. Daniels' direction, dishevel his hair and untie his cravat at the thought of Jemma marrying him, and even possibly challenge him to a duel. Never mind that the thought of doing anything quite so undignified made his pride shrivel up and die. 

The fact was, Mr. Daniels wasn't _demonic_. He was polite and reasonably intelligent and handsome. (His looks, Fitz suspected uncharitably, were his main appeal.) Despite the inquiries Fitz had discreetly conducted, there wasn't even the slightest chance of him secretly being a spy for Napoleon. His worst crime, in fact, was that of being boring. And if Jemma wanted boring...he was in no position to stop her. 

Luckily, he was able to avoid the sight of them together. Until a country walk found him inconveniently positioned behind a hedge in what proved itself to be a perfect position for eavesdropping. He had stopped to retrieve a stubborn pebble from his boots and when the endeavor had taken long than expected, he had sat down in the shade of the hedge and hoped that no one would find him there. Then he heard voices drifting through the other side of the hedge and froze.

“My family didn't want me to join up, of course. My mother had visions of me falling to my death from the deck of an airship or being burned alive in some horrible accident. They would have preferred me to be a curate or a lawyer or, worst of all, a landowner,” Mr. Daniels said with a laugh. “I can't even imagine how dull running an estate would be.”

“So you refused to listen to the lamentations of everyone around you and did precisely what you intended to?” Jemma asked lightly.

“What else could I have possibly done, Miss Simmons? I believe that I have never let myself be deterred by the words or the whims of others.”

“That's a quality I admire greatly in anyone. I—I believe that anyone who would let others persuade them away from their purpose must not have believed in it very deeply to begin with,” Jemma said. Fitz could just picture her face as she said it: chin tilted high, mouth set in a determined line, eyes steely. “I find that my esteem for you only grows the more that I know of your character, Mr. Daniels.”

“And mine as well.” Their voices became too quiet for Fitz to hear as they walked on but he had heard enough to make his heart plummet into his boots and then further into the ground to nod politely at the fossils gathered there before it burst into a fiery ball at the earth's core. On some level, he had known objectively that he was still in love with Jemma Simmons. It had been a fact of the sort he might record in one of his notebooks in neat copper-plate script right alongside the estate accounts and his latest experiments with their out-of-date mechanicals, a part of his everyday existence that he only thought of when something called his attention to it. Yet now, watching her turn those extraordinary eyes and the warmth of her regard on Will Daniels, the fact that he loved her was a searing sensation that he could hardly avoid thinking of. It was a hand at his throat cutting off his air, a wound in his side slowly bleeding out, and Fitz knew that he would simply have to hope that someday it would scar over once again. 

In the days left of his stay with Lincoln and Daisy, however, he intended to amuse himself by playing with the children and spoiling them horribly, tinkering around with the steam carriage Lord Coulson kept out back, reading, and avoiding Jemma Simmons whenever possible. His inclusion in a trip to the seaside that she had devised was a most unhoped for diversion. However, there was no way of refusing Coulson and although Lincoln and Daisy swore up and down that they would not go if he chose not to, Daisy still had an excited gleam in her eyes when she talked of the cliffside walks they might take. Fitz reasoned that since it would be a quite large party, as Captain Morse and Mr. Hunter would be joining them there, he could happily pass unnoticed.

The port was quite charming, he had to admit upon their arrival. From the colorful houses perched upon the cliffs to the shops along the quaint main street to the airships tethered in the bay, the entire town was lovely enough to paint. He was barely able to resist the temptation to ask the sailors scurrying up and down ropes to the airships if he would be able to inspect one. The only ship he'd ever been abroad had been a pleasure cruiser in London for an all-too-short hour that had been a birthday present from Mack and Elena. Even then, he hadn't been able to look at the engine nearly as closely as he would have liked, largely because he had spent the entire ascent heaving miserably over the side of the ship and then been forced to waste nearly half an hour on presenting his credentials and convincing the ship's chief engineer that he wasn't a French spy. (It had been his terrible French that finally did the trick.)

“They're marvelous, aren't they?” Jemma asked from beside him. Fitz whirled around, blinking at her in a daze. They had embarked on a walk along the seaside and the last time he had seen Jemma, she had been on Mr. Daniels' arm. “The ships,” she continued. “Sailing on one is the most exhilarating thing you could possibly imagine.”

“I think they're a miracle. Those massive engines floating as lightly as a bird on the currents. We studied them in university but I still can't quite believe it when I see them,” Fitz admitted. “Tried to get inside one of their engine rooms once, actually, but I couldn't figure out much.”

“Looking at engines won't teach you anything. You've got to watch them running. Fix things when they break down, get covered in grease, prevent a few small fires...” Jemma sounded almost wistful as she talked about it, leaning forward on the stones on the seawall to gaze up at the airships. 

“Do you miss your ship, Miss Simmons?” It was a foolish, improper question and Fitz cursed himself for having asked it the moment the words left his lips.

“Exceedingly so,” Jemma said, a small smile curving her lips. “ _The Lioness_ is one of the best ships in the fleet. Her navigational system alone--”

“Miss Simmons! Come see what we've found!” Mr. Daniels waved her over from where he was perched on top of the seawall and with a gracious nod in his direction, Jemma went, leaving Fitz with a head full of questions and a stubborn, absurd sliver of hope.

 

Much to her surprise, Jemma liked Fitz's sister-in-law. Daisy was lively and funny and possessed of a passionate determination to do what she thought right, from aiding young unwed mothers to insisting that the village school be properly funded. 

“You know, you would have made an excellent captain,” Jemma blurted out over tea. They had found a cozy tea room by the seaside, complete with floral drapes and sticky toffee pudding, and were only waiting for Bobbi to join them. The men were probably off in some smoky tavern and while Jemma could stomach smoky taverns with the best of them, she much preferred her perfectly brewed cup of Earl Grey. 

“Not all battles are fought in the skies, you know.” Daisy smiled down into her tea. “I like to think that I've made my own kind of contribution to the war effort.”

Jemma had the suspicion that the other woman wasn't talking about knitting scarves for soldiers or starting up subscriptions for the families of the wounded. Lord Coulson was frequently called down to London on business yet she had never been able to find any registers of his supposed financial transactions in the papers. Messenger birds had arrived frequently for him during her stay at the Coulson manor and when Jemma had peeked at one, it had been written in a code even her naval training couldn't help her recognize. Phillip Coulson was much more than the mildly eccentric, kindly grandfather he liked to play at being and whatever secret work he was conducting for the Crown, his adopted daughter was certainly part of it.

“Tell me, Miss Johnson, have you had any experience with ciphers? I encountered some fascinating French ones when I was on active duty,” Jemma said and watched Daisy's eyes light up with excitement. Women who fought actively on the front lines like her and Bobbi were still a relative rarity but during her years sailing the skies, she'd discovered that women played a much greater part in the war effort than anyone realized. The reports the Royal Navy had gotten from a Russian spy who simply went by the name Black Widow had been crucial in pummeling Napoleon's forces on their retreat from the Russian front. The Stark factories were producing more iron than they had in decades thanks to the quietly competent efforts of a general manager named Pepper Potts. And out in the vast expanses of the American West, an astronomer who signed all their papers J. Foster was making unprecedented discoveries. “I'd love to see if you could make heads or tails of this one,” Jemma continued and slid a piece of paper with a particularly knotty French code on it across the table. Daisy had it solved in three minutes flat.

“I had an unusual childhood,” she said with a graceful shrug when Jemma stared at her, wide-eyed. “My father was...fond of puzzles.”

“And you grew up near Radcliffe Hall?”

“When we weren't traveling, yes. Sir Holden and my father actually have quite the bitter rivalry,” Daisy added. “My father insulted his hedges ten years ago and ever since then they've been trying to one-up each other botanically. Last year, they both built hermitages and tried to hire the same man to be their resident hermit.”

“And yet you married his son. Did they declare a temporary truce for the wedding or did they come to blows over who would be providing the flowers?” Jemma asked and tried to hold back her laughter.

“Even worse. Sir Holden hit my father over the head with a particularly large calla lily at a garden party when he heard that Lincoln had been calling on me. If it hadn't been for Fitz, Sir Holden would have never allowed the marriage,” Daisy explained.

“Fitz? Really?”

“Really. He badgered his father until Sir Holden gave his blessing to Lincoln. Pointed out the advantages of the marriage, talked my father into letting Sir Holden win at auction for some exotic plant so he would be in a good mood, found the money to pay for the wedding itself by selling off a few antiques...he even threatened to cut off Sir Holden's allowance until he agreed to the marriage,” Daisy said. “Fitz can be very determined when it comes to the people he cares about.”

“That—I—I can hardly imagine.” Thankfully, Bobbi soon arrived to rescue their conversation and steer it away from any more mentions of Leo Fitz. Jemma's mind, unfortunately, wasn't nearly as adept. She kept on returning to Daisy's story and to the image of Fitz, showing more resolve on behalf of his brother than he ever had for himself. Fitz, endlessly and patiently playing with Lincoln and Daisy's children and letting them treat him as a human climbing structure. Fitz, listening to Coulson's war stories for the hundredth time. Fitz, insisting on staying behind on a country walk to fix a villager's smoking chimney or broken gate. At nineteen, he had been impulsively, carelessly kind but at twenty-six, he was a thoroughly good man. Perhaps (only perhaps) she wasn't the only one who had changed.

 

There was a storm coming in. Mr. Daniels didn't seem to care. He was determined to race Jemma across the bay in the light craft that sailors used to ascend to the airships and nothing would steer him from his purpose. Fitz just wished that they would decide one way or the other so everyone else could go inside and finally have their tea. 

“You must be able to smell it in the wind,” Jemma said. “There's a storm hovering just over the horizon and these craft are hardly built for it. A proper gale could blow one apart.”

“Do you mean to say that you're not capable of handling any craft in a storm?”

“Of course I am.” Jemma smoothed her hands over the gold braid of her captain's jacket. “I just—it would be reckless, foolish even, to go out in weather like this, Mr. Daniels. When I in good conscience--”

“I simply want to sail with you, Miss Simmons, and I won't let something as small as the weather deter me.” Mr. Daniels flashed what was presumably meant to be a dazzling smile. “I think you'll find that I'm quite determined.”

He showed no signs of giving ground and eventually Jemma relented. They descended down to the docks, Jemma explaining their purpose in a low voice to the lieutenant stationed there. In a few minutes, they were off, each skimmer whisked away by the low hanging air currents of the bay. The sensible people, namely Fitz, Hunter, and Bobbi, retreated inside to await their return. (Lincoln and Daisy were off paying a visit to an acquaintance of Coulson's.)

“He's an idiot,” Hunter grumbled. “Probably managed to drop himself on his head as a baby.”

“He's determined,” Bobbi corrected. “I suppose Jemma likes that.”

“We could still put Plan Alpha Strike into effect, Bob,” Hunter said hopefully. “I know lots of people from the _Hartley_ who can break the law without breaking the law, y'know? Just say the word and we'll have him halfway to--”

“Plan Alpha Strike is a ridiculous name. Jemma is our friend and more than capable of making her own--”

“Plan Alpha Strike is a bloody brilliant name!”

“For a terrible plan,” Bobbi retorted. Their arguing was cut short by a massive crash of thunder that echoed across the sky and as one, they all turned to watch the storm now raging outside. Rain sleeted down the windows, the sky had turned an alarming shade of green, and off in the distance, lightning split the clouds and came cracking down into the water.

“Jem—Miss Simmons is out there,” Fitz breathed. He found himself on his feet and in front of the window without any real recollection of having moved there, eyes glued to the scene outside.

“She's weathered far worse, Mr. Fitz,” Bobbi said. “I assure you that she'll be fine.”

“Can't say that about the idiot, though,” Hunter said under his breath and ignored the sharp look Bobbi cast his way. As it turned out, he was right. Barely ten minutes after, Jemma came stumbling out of the storm with an unconscious Mr. Daniels and a half-wrecked boat.

“The boat wasn't built to handle the storm,” she gasped out. “He was trying to haul in the rigging and he nearly went overboard. Hit his head on the rudder and now he—he won't wake up.”

“Someone call for a physician.” Had he really said that? Fitz realized that, much to his surprise, he had. Everyone was just standing about in the street, gazing down at Mr. Daniels' limp form in shock and not doing any of the hundred and one things that needed to be done. Someone would have to manage the situation and apparently that someone would have to be him. “Mr. Hunter, go back to the inn and see if Lincoln and Daisy have returned from their visit. If not, I recall a physician's shingle two streets over. Captain Morse, can you arrange for some hot food and a bed downstairs with the innkeeper? I don't imagine we'll want to carry him up the stairs. Miss Simmons, do you think you can carry him into the inn?”

Jemma nodded, white-faced.

 

Fitz left for Bath a few days after Mr. Daniels' accident. His presence was no longer needed after the arrival of a long string of doctors and apothecaries and if he was being truthful, he welcomed the chance to no longer torture himself with the sight of Jemma sitting by Mr. Daniels' bedside. Besides, his father and brother had been urging him to come for weeks now, most likely because they had no idea how to manage their affairs on their own. Upon his arrival in Bath, Fitz discovered that he had been right. His father had already offended several prominent botanists, who Fitz had to placate with tea and the promise of cuttings from the Radcliffe Hall gardens, his brother had racked up several substantial debts, and they had both pursued the family's sole ducal connection with a fervor that made him wince. 

Mercifully, Bobbi and Hunter arrived in Bath some two weeks after his arrival and immediately invited him to tea, merrily disregarding the elaborate system of calling cards that proper etiquette demanded. They had a choice piece of gossip to share, social conventions be damned. 

“Jemma isn't going to marry Mr. Daniels,” Hunter informed him and took a triumphant bite of cake. Bobbi's expression was more neutral but she seemed to be watching Fitz closely for some kind of reaction. Did she expect him to leap up from the tea table and dance about the room with joy like an actor at Drury Lane? 

“But she...I thought that they had an understanding,” Fitz stammered. “The accident only seemed to bring them closer together—she, ah, she sat by his bedside.”

“She left a few days after you did. Urgent naval business that she had no choice but to attend to,” Bobbi told him. “Although I suspect that she may have been eager to go.”

“Lucky escape,” Hunter muttered. “He proposed to his nurse less than a month into his convalescence. We all hope that they'll be very happy reading sentimental poetry to one another and taking long walks by the seaside.”

Fitz's head was whirling. Not only was Jemma not going to marry Mr. Daniels at the moment, there was no possibility of her ever marrying Mr. Daniels in the future and sailing off into the sunset with him to disappear from England forever. But his glee was soon checked by the thought of what Jemma must have been feeling. She had cared for the other man, however little Fitz cared to reflect on it, and the sting of rejection compounded upon her probable guilt about the accident...

“How is she faring?” Fitz blurted out. “Miss Simmons? Will she...was she very much affected by the news?”

“Better than we all expected her to be. In fact,” Bobbi said slowly, looking at Fitz. “I expect that very soon she'll be completely recovered.”

 

Fitz was shocked when the butler informed him of another visitor after Bobbi and Hunter had left. His family wasn't exactly known for their hospitality, even if there had been a discernible improvement in the quality of their entertaining since Fitz had come of age. (He remembered one proposed dinner party of his childhood that had ended in disaster after all the guests declined, citing excuses from a prior invitation to a deathly disease.) Perhaps it was the sole remaining truculent botanist come to accept his overtures of peace.

It was most decidedly not the botanists. Fitz sprung to his feet as the butler announced Miss Raina Flowers and the second loveliest woman he had ever seen in his life glided into the room. It took a considerable amount of effort not to stare. He had heard Miss Flowers' name bandied about Bath society, usually in glowing terms as they discussed everything from her signature floral dresses to her graceful manners to her uncanny knack of predicting future social developments. Even without her sizable fortune, she would have moved in all the best social circles. What Fitz couldn't fathom was why she had decided to pay a call on him.

“We have a family connection, I believe,” she said sweetly. “Through the Irish branch? We're rather disreputable, I'm afraid, and so I know it's dreadful of me to presume on the connection like this but I simply had to meet you when I heard you'd arrived in Bath.”

“No presumption at all. I'm delighted to make your acquaintance, Miss Flowers,” Fitz said. “May I offer you some tea?”

“I'd love some.” Miss Flowers dimpled at him in a way that seemed remarkably deliberate. When it arrived, she took one delicate sip, ate half a biscuit, and mentioned that she had read one of his published papers. “Your proposals for a new model of steam carriages were absolutely fascinating. I simply have to hear more about how you plan to modify the clockwork.”

Fitz was charmed in spite of himself.

Over the next few weeks, Miss Flowers became a regular visitor at the family residence. She made lively conversation at their dinner parties, delighted everyone during their visiting hours, and even accompanied Fitz to the theater on a few memorable occasions. He had simply wanted to watch She Stoops to Conquer but that proved difficult with most of his fellow theatergoers gaping at his and Miss Flowers' box and the more daring darting in and out to say hello. Thankfully, Miss Flowers had managed to dispense with most of the social niceties by the second act. 

After she patiently listened to Sir Holden deliver a full forty-five minute discourse on hedges, he pronounced her a charming creature with only a hint of irony and even Grant declared her to be a “capital hunter”. Miss Flowers appeared to have made every effort to coax his family into a wholesale adoration of her. What she sought from them, Fitz had no idea.

“People simply don't seek us out,” he told Mack and Elena. “We're not the kind of family whose calling card gets put in a prominent position on the mantelpiece. It's more likely to be shoved to the edge where it can discreetly fall in the fire, in fact.”

“I know you're not nearly as silly as you sound,” Elena said firmly and fixed him with a fierce look. “Any fool could tell what she's doing.”

“She means to secure you, Fitz,” Mack finally said after Fitz had gazed at them blankly for a good three minutes. Fitz gave them another blank stare. “In marriage.”

“Me? But I'm—I've got a demanding family, a few papers that were modestly received, a minor title, and a moldering manor. What on earth could I have to offer her? Or any woman?” Fitz added.

“You have nice eyes?” Elena offered after a moment.

 

Jemma wasn't heartbroken and everyone expected her to be. It was quite irritating. Luckily, the irritation distracted her enough from contemplating exactly why she wasn't heartbroken. She had had every intention of marrying Mr. Daniels, after all. It had all seemed so simple when they were at Sir Coulson's country house. He had all the qualities she was looking for, she was an excellent match for any younger son, and they would most likely produce children who were both attractive and intelligent. What more could she have hoped for? (A man who made her blood spark, who matched her every idea with one of his own, who understood the wonder in her eyes when she talked of the things she'd seen—no, she'd found that man already. And for all the fire she'd felt leap between them, he'd broken her heart and his too.) 

Perhaps, she admitted after she'd heard the news of Mr. Daniels' engagement, they had only made sense in a limited context, like the plants she'd studied that only bloomed at midnight. He had been the only remotely eligible man at Sir Coulson's house party (apart from Fitz) and she had been quite determined to find a husband. Perhaps the doubts she had felt when he insisted on taking the skimmers out in a storm would have grown over time anyway. Perhaps he wasn't quite what she was looking for. Perhaps what she had sought had always—or perhaps it was time for her to leave England again.

“I'll take any kind of assignment, Admiral Carter,” Jemma promised. “Anything at all.”

“So you wouldn't mind transporting vegetables to Spain?” Admiral Margaret Carter asked, face perfectly straight. “We've got some cargoes of potatoes that are going over on the slow freight.”

“It would be a delight.”

“Captain Simmons, you hadn't taken shore leave in seven years. We've almost got Bonaparte where we want him and then after we've locked the bloody Frenchman up, the Admiralty might finally give us money for another proper scientific expedition. Anything else would be a waste of your talents,” Admiral Carter said firmly. 

“There isn't anything to occupy my talents here in England either,” Jemma argued and hoped desperately that the admiral would understand. She belonged in the air, feet firmly planted on the deck of her ship as it swirled and dove through the winds, her crew ready for her next order. There, she could control her world perfectly. There, nothing and no one could hurt her. 

“Do you want to spend your entire life on board an airship? Truly?” the admiral asked. “I'd heard rumors that you were about to be engaged and trust me, Captain, broken hearts have a way of following you wherever you sail.”

“He wasn't the one who hurt me,” Jemma blurted out and felt her eyes go wide. “He—it--I'm not entirely sure what I want at the moment, truthfully. I seem to have lost my way a bit. Misplaced true north.”

“You'll find it again in due time. Which is why I'm not sending you back out. Stay in England, Captain Simmons. Travel, visit your friends, drink a decent cup of tea. Allow yourself to be happy.” Admiral Carter's voice softened as she said it and Jemma suddenly remembered that her commander was as well acquainted with heartbreak as she was. Her fiancee, a young American soldier named Steve Rogers, had vanished while flying one of the first experimental airships in battle against Prussia. The last anyone had heard of him, he was flying a dangerous Prussian rocket he'd managed to capture out over uninhabited territory to detonate it. It was believed that he'd gotten as far as Antarctica before his ship had gone down. 

“I—I believe I can manage that. Happiness.”

Later that day, she finally penned a response to Bobbi and Hunter's many letters and sent it off by one of the new mechanical messenger birds. They'd been entreating her to visit them in Bath for the past month and she was long overdue.

 

When Fitz first saw her again, he thought that he was dreaming. Jemma Simmons certainly couldn't be here, in Bath, wearing a white dress that made her look vaguely angelic and listening to a concerto with a look of intense concentration on his face. Everyone else seemed to be behaving as if it was a perfectly normal occurrence but Fitz couldn't stop glancing over at her. If he was a magnet, she was his true north, the point he was irrevocably drawn to no matter how hard he tried to pull himself away. 

He had thoroughly enjoyed the first half of the concert, before he saw her sitting in the audience. He couldn't remember anything about the second half. Afterward, while people were milling about and gossiping over watery lemonade, he found a secluded spot by the windows to attempt to collect his thoughts. Fate had other plans. Fitz froze as he spotted her white dress and brown curls moving through the crowd towards him. She couldn't be—she surely wouldn't think of—but indeed she was.

“Mr. Fitz,” Jemma said, standing before him. She looked almost unsure, her hands twisting in the fabric of her skirts and her eyes surprisingly soft. “Was the concert to your liking?”

“It was quite delightful.” Had it been? Suddenly he couldn't remember anything about the concert with her standing in front of him. They stood in silence for a few moments longer, neither willing to move, until Jemma spoke again.

“The weather is quite lovely,” she remarked.

“Unseasonably warm for March,” Fitz said, his tongue suddenly thick in his mouth. “Are you—are you finding Bath to your liking, Miss Simmons?”

“I—More than I had ever imagined.”

“Have you, er, have you been to the theater yet? It's quite lovely.” Fitz had been able to say clever things at one point in his life, hadn't he? Intelligent, witty things that had once charmed Jemma Simmons?

“Not yet, but I suppose that I will soon. Captain Morse is quite fond of it and I suspect that Mr. Hunter goes along solely to complain about it,” Jemma admitted. Fitz laughed and for a few more minutes, they stood there in a silence more companionable than stilted. She was called away, rather inevitably, but the memory of their brief conversation lingered with Fitz for the rest of the day. 

The day after next, she appeared at the Assembly Rooms and Fitz almost worked up the courage to ask her to dance. Almost. Instead he stood by her side along the wall of the Assembly Rooms for a full ten minutes and had a perfectly pleasant conversation about airships with her. She couldn't tell him too much, as a significant amount of British airship designs were considered to be state secrets, but what she could tell him kept him enraptured.

“Do you still hope to sail in one?” Jemma asked him quietly. “I remember that you—that they once held a great fascination for you.”

“They still do, but I have no great desire to sail on board one. I'd like to inspect their engines, certainly, perhaps see if I could make improvements to them but I'm afraid my airsickness makes it quite difficult,” Fitz said with a wince. “Besides, I—I've found that as I've grown older, my hopes have become much simpler.”

“A good cup of tea and a roaring fire?” Jemma said dryly.

“Not quite. I, ah, I still quite hope for a family. A wife who can tolerate all my eccentricities and perhaps has some of her own, a house that isn't falling to bits...” Fitz trailed off, aware that he'd perhaps revealed too much. “I suppose that must sound quite silly to you. Rather pales in the face of adventure.”

“No, I think that's all we can ever hope for. To be surrounded by those who make us happy.” If he hadn't known better, he would have sworn that she was blushing. “I...I think that must be Bobbi summoning me. Give my best to your family, Mr. Fitz.” 

Fitz stared after her, wondering what he could have said to offend her. If he had in fact offended her. He might have simply puzzled her. (Jemma had never been overly fond of puzzles that she couldn't solve.) Or she could have decided to never pursue an acquaintance with him again or—Fitz sighed, attempted to straighten his hair, and headed across the room to prevent his family from offending anyone else. He'd barely glimpsed them all evening and that was most decidedly a bad sign. 

The next time that he escorted Miss Flowers to a ball, Jemma didn't come over and talk to him. Instead every time that he glanced in her direction, she happened to be looking back and fixing him with a piercing stare. It unsettled Fitz considerably. 

“Mr. Fitz?” Miss Flowers asked with a polite smile. Fitz realized that she had been telling a rather detailed story about her dressmaker for the past five minutes. “Are you quite all right?”

“Perfectly well. Just...the ballroom is a little overheated tonight, don't you think?” Fitz said and hoped she would take the flush across his face as a result of the crush tonight. “My apologies.”

“None are necessary.” Miss Flowers sent him another brilliant smile and promptly changed the subject to the monkeys of the South American jungle. It was a well calculated transition. Perhaps too well calculated. Whenever he was with Miss Flowers, he couldn't help being charmed but he also couldn't help wondering what kind of plotting was going on behind her big brown eyes. Her ability to always say the right thing at the right moment was...unsettling to say the least, as was her unvarying perfection. Jemma had never been perfect, proud and stubborn and refusing to admit that she ever needed help, but every scowl and every sharp word had only made her more dazzlingly real. But then, he hadn't been able to hold fast to real. Perhaps perfect would have to substitute.

 

“So are you going to marry what's-her-name?” Hunter asked bluntly.

“You don't ask people things like that, Hunter! It simply isn't done,” Bobbi hissed. Then she promptly turned to Fitz. “Miss Flowers does seem to be quite charmed by you. Or by your title.”

“It's not a very impressive title,” Fitz shrugged. “And I—I haven't the slightest idea of what I'm going to do.”

“This may sound very forward of us but--,” Bobbi said slowly.

“Says the most forward woman I've ever met,” Hunter interjected.

“Do you care for her? Enough to make the match that half of Bath expects?” Bobbi asked.

“I think that my future marriage will depend very little on how much I care for the woman in question. And I have no doubt that Miss Flowers and I would have a happy future. She's clever enough to ensure that. Yet there's one simple fact,” Fitz admitted. “I have only been in love with one woman in my life and I suspect that I will only ever be in love with her.”

He received the letter the next day.

It was a creamy piece of paper, folded in half and hastily sealed with wax, and when Fitz split it open, he saw Jemma's neat handwriting unfurling across the page.

_Mr. Fitz_  
_I can no longer wait in silence, my words trapped inside my throat and my heart unsure whether it wishes to go this way or that, or make polite conversation with you in drawing rooms. I must speak through the little means that I do possess. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. I beg of you not to tell me that I am too late, that the years that have passed have smothered anything that we once carefully held between us. I am yours, if you will have me, and with a heart and soul that are more yours than they were when we first met. Say that I have been unjust, say that I have been too quick to judge, say that I have been at times unkind, but never say that I have been untrue. You are the only man I have ever and will ever love. You are what brought me here to Bath, even when I did not know it. You occupy my thoughts and run rampant through my hopes and it amazes me that you cannot see it. Surely you must suspect? Surely the part of you that once loved me must still know?_  
_Give me a word, a gesture, some kind of sign and tonight I shall either be the happiest woman in the world or never darken your doorstep again. Until then, I remain_  
_yours, J.S._

Declarations like that required some kind of equally dramatic gesture. Only Fitz had never been particularly good at those. Perfectly phrased speeches, epic poems dedicated to the object of his affections, massive bouquets of flowers that arrived at the exact right moment...those had never been his specialty. He stumbled over his words, couldn't think of anything to rhyme with “love”, and sent flowers two days late. What he was good at, however, was coming up with a sensible plan. He had to find Jemma. As soon as possible. So there was nothing for it but to reach for his overcoat and go in search of her through the streets of Bath. 

The day that Leo Fitz discovered Jemma Simmons still loved him, it was raining. A cool, soft mist that soaked through the upturned collar of his coat and clouded all the windows in the town. The figures that bustled through the streets all seemed nearly identical huddled underneath their umbrellas but almost forty-five minutes into his search, Fitz saw her determined stride from across the cobbled street.

“Miss Simmons!” he called and hurried across the street, dodging one horse, one steam car on the verge of breakdown, and a few very irate pedestrians. “Miss Simmons, I must--” He stopped, tripping over his words. She was accompanied by Bobbi and he had a strange feeling that declarations of eternal love didn't happen in front of friends.

“Mr. Fitz.” Jemma gazed up at him, anxiously tugging at one of her curls. “How—have you—have you found your day agreeable?”

“Very much so. Miss Simmons, might—might I accompany you on the rest of your walk?”

“Certainly. I was just walking with Captain Morse back to the house she has let so if--”

“I'm more than capable of finding my way on my own,” Bobbi interrupted firmly. “I dare say that I can handle Bath after the frozen tundra of Russia.” Then she was off, with what Fitz could have sworn was a wink.

“I received your letter,” Fitz blurted out. 

“You did?”

“It was most—most eloquent,” Fitz said weakly. “Some very fine turns of phrase.”

“Yes?”

“ and I knew that I had to find you and tell you that my feelings remain quite unchanged. Seven years ago, I met the most extraordinary woman in the world and I--I have loved you ever since, whether or not I had the good sense to know it.”

Jemma flung her arms about his neck and kissed him with every ounce of passion in her. 

“I thought it was hopeless, you know,” she informed him when she finally pulled away. “That I would have to spend the rest of my life pining for a man who was decidedly disinterested.”

“I thought my case was hopeless. I had resigned myself to being hopelessly in love with a woman who wouldn't spare a glance in my direction and knowing that it had all been my own fault,” Fitz said. “Quite tragic, really.” 

“We were both young and foolish. Much as I hate to admit it, we may have needed those years apart. Just imagine, I could have burned down Radcliffe Hall three times over with misguided experiments,” Jemma added with a little laugh, then took both his hands in hers and continued. “But this time, we have both seen the world and I know there is no one in it who suits me as well as you do.”

“So it's settled then. I am to endeavor to make you as wildly happy as possible after years of discontent spent apart. If, of course, that would be to your liking, Miss Simmons?” Fitz added, suddenly keen aware that he had yet to properly ask for her hand. 

“You have the strangest way of proposing, Mr. Fitz, but I believe that I shall simply have to accept you anyway. And, of course, endeavor to make you as wildly happy as possible after years of discontent spent apart.”

They were indeed to be quite remarkably happy, to the surprise of some and the delight of others. After Jemma promised Sir Holden rare plant samples from Australia and dedicated a significant amount of her fortune to the upkeep of Radcliffe Hall, Fitz's father and brother resigned themselves to her presence. Bobbi and Hunter were delighted at the news before their delight dissolved into a protracted argument over which of them could take greater credit for helping bring Fitz and Jemma back together. Mack had never been so happy to be proven wrong while Lincoln and Daisy had to be restrained from hosting an elaborate engagement party and posting notices of the engagement in any paper that would accept them. As for Fitz and Jemma, they were simply determined to be happy. And so, through lab explosions and new inventions and Fitz's first proper flight in an airship (accompanied by his first prolonged bout of air sickness) and a monkey she brought back for him and two alarmingly curious children, through good and bad and everything in between, they were.


End file.
